


The Kid's Not Alright

by keyboardclicks



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Non-Consensual Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Torture, Sojiro is a good dad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-04-20 10:02:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14258595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keyboardclicks/pseuds/keyboardclicks
Summary: Akira's good at pretending to be alright, but nobody's strong all of the time.(AKA, the times Akira really needed a good cry.  Because let boys cry, dammit.)





	1. Bulletproof

**Author's Note:**

> My Akira doesn't have a romantic relationship with any of the girls. He's dating Yusuke, actually, but that doesn't come up anywhere as of now so I didn't feel it necessary to tag.

11/20/20XX

 

Sojiro wasn’t sure he had ever been so scared as when he heard that the leader of the notorious Phantom Thieves was dead.  He stared at the television, frozen as his brain tried to make the connections as to what it meant.

Dead.  The leader of the Phantom Thieves was dead.

That meant Akira was dead.  Akira was the leader of the Phantom Thieves, and the leader of the Phantom Thieves was dead.  It was impossible, but the headline on the news kept playing over and over again.

It was stupid, but the only thing he could think in the moment was, _What am I gonna tell his parents?_

Then the doorbell rang _,_ and the only thing Sojiro could assume was that it was the police, here to trash his house because he had been harboring a criminal, and that wherever Futaba was her room had better be clear of any evidence because he couldn’t lose two kids in one night.

Well, it wasn’t exactly the police at his door, but a prosecutor.  With an arm around her shoulder and leaning against her weight was Akira, battered and bruised but unmistakably _not_ shot through the head.

Unmistakably _alive._

“I’m sorry to call at such a late hour,” said Niijima.  “There’s no time to explain. Here, take his arm; he can’t stand on his own right now.  Be careful, though, I think he may have at least one broken rib.”

“What’s wrong with him?”  Akira leaned on him heavily, and up close Sojiro could see the bruising and cuts on his face.  “The news just said-”

“There’s no time,” she said.  “I have to go. Just keep him safe.”

And she was gone.

Sojiro stared at the doorway where she had been, then at Akira who slumped against him.

“Can you make it up the stairs?” he asked.  “There’s a spare room on the second floor near Futaba’s room.  You can have the couch if not.”

“I can make it,” he mumbled.  “Just… just help me.”

It was a slow process.  Every couple of steps they had to pause, Akira citing that his head was swimming.

“What happened to you?” Sojiro asked when they were halfway up.  “You look like shit.”

“Drugged,” he replied.

“Wh- drugged?!”  Akira flinched; Sojiro lowered his voice.  “What do you mean you were drugged?  Who did this to you?”

“Police.”

He was unable to articulate exactly what he was thinking at that response, the only representation being something like a long series of question marks.  

“I don’t wanna talk about it right now.”

Sojiro supposed that was fair.

It took them eight minutes just to climb the stairs, but once they were on flat ground the kid regained some of his footing.  Sojiro pushed open the door of the guest room that hadn’t been used in who knows how long and sat him down on the bed.

“You want me to run back to the cafe and get you some clothes?” he asked.  His school uniform was torn in places, splattered with dirt and something red that Sojiro didn’t want to admit was probably his blood.

“There’s some in Futaba’s room.”

Sojiro blinked.  “What?”

“Clothes.  In Futaba’s room.  We put them just in case.”  He looked up at him; his black eye was swollen almost completely shut, but the other was alright.  “In a bag next to her bed.”

He was right; next to Futaba’s bed there was a bag with nothing but sweatpants and a sweatshirt.  Finding it, Sojiro paused for a moment to wonder where in the world Futaba _was._  She hadn’t left her room at all day, but without warning had rushed out of the house saying she had to check on something and hadn’t returned since.  That was right before he had turned on the TV and seen the news about the kid’s apparent suicide.

Arg, nothing made sense!

Akira seemed grateful to get a change of clothes, but even pulling off his blazer and shirt seemed to be causing him pain; his breathing was heavy and his teeth clenched if he moved his arm a certain way.

“I’ve got painkillers in the bathroom, I think.  And… maybe some bandaids? Though I don’t know how much good they’ll do…”

The left side of the kids chest was one big, ugly purple bruise.  No wonder he was having trouble breathing. Along with that there were cuts and scrapes on his arms, face, and torso, and what must have been puncture marks from… whatever it was he’d been drugged with.  Honestly, Sojiro was surprised he was still moving.

“I wish there was more I could do…”

After a moment, Akira fumbled and reached for something in his pocket.  His phone, Sojiro was surprised to see, was perfectly intact.

“...Call Doctor Takemi,” he said, offering the device to him.

“Kid, it’s late; the clinic’s closed.  Besides, she’ll ask too many questions.”

“I have her cellphone number, and she knows about the Phantom Thieves.  Call; she’ll pick up for me.”

She was there in ten minutes.

“The injuries are mostly concentrated around his torso, but his face took a beating, too.  I’d have to give him an x-ray to be sure of broken ribs but there’s not much we could do for them even if they are.”  She sighed. “Rest is the most important thing for him right now, but still I’ll do what I can. If I knew what kind of drugs he’d been given I could maybe administer an antidote, but he’s pretty lucid so it seems to be wearing off anyway.”

She knelt at the bedside and shone a little flashlight in his eyes.  “You sure have a knack for getting into trouble, don’t you?”

Takemi did a far better job at patching him up than Sojiro could ever have hoped to.  When finished, and with Akira under the covers of the bed, she pulled a bottle from her bag.

“Have him take these with water, and food if he can stomach it.  They’re pretty strong painkillers, so no more than two every twelve hours.  They’ll probably knock him out for a while, too.”

Sojiro took it.  “Thank you, Doctor, for coming out here after closing and for doing all this.  You can send the bill to this address; I promise to pay you back in full as soon as possible.”

“Don’t worry about it, it’s on the house.”

“Huh?”

She smiled back at Akira’s form, already dozing.  “I’m happy to help him any time; he did a lot for me earlier in the year.  I’m just returning the favor. But if you wanna give me a free cup of coffee once in a while at that cafe of yours, I won’t argue.”

Had it been any other time, under any other circumstances, Sojiro would have definitely asked more questions.  As it was, he just showed her to the door.

“Bottoms up, kid,” he said upon returning with a tall glass of water and painkillers in hand.  Akira took them obediently, but judging by the face he made actually getting them down was something of a challenge.

“It hurts to swallow,” he grimaced.  Whether that was because he’d hurt his throat or because the pills were nearly the size of a baby carrot, Sojiro wasn’t sure.

“Well, you got it down.  Should kick in soon, and that’s good because God, do you need some sleep.”

He nodded and adjusted himself on the bed, pointedly resting on his back.

“I’m gonna go wait downstairs for Futaba to come home.  If you need anything, that’s where I’ll be, okay?”

“Mmhm.”

“You want me to turn the light off?”

“Mmhm.”

“Alright.”

He started snoring before Sojiro was even halfway down the stairs.

Fifteen minutes later, Futaba bursted through the door, carrying a yowling Morgana in her arms.  “Where’s Joker?!”

“Futaba!  Where did you-”

But she was already headed up the stairs.  Sojiro chased after her.

“Futaba, wait!  He’s asleep, don’t bother him!”

It was odd to be the one looking up at her, but that’s how many steps ahead she was.  “But he’s alright, right?”

“Well, er…”  He scratched his head.  “I mean, he’s pretty beat up, but otherwise yeah.  He’s sleeping it off.”

She nodded, then finally set down the cat who bolted off somewhere upstairs.

“Where were you?” he asked.  “After the kid came home looking like that, I worried that something had happened to you!”

She shrugged, taking a seat on the stairs.  “Looking for Mona. He wasn’t at the cafe so I had to run all around Yongen Jaya.  He’d want to know that Akira’s back.”

“Yeah, about that… what _happened_ to him?  He’s been missing since yesterday, then that Prosecutor Niijima shows up with him at the door and he’s not only beat to a pulp but drugged?”

She shook her head.  “Can’t tell you yet.  Secret.  Trust me.”

He sighed.  “I assume this is some kind of… Phantom Thieves thing I don’t understand?”

“Yep.”

It was only because Sojiro knew how futile fighting with Futaba was that he asked nothing more.  This was just an endless night of questions that weren’t going to be answered.

She stood back up and stretched.  “Tired. I’m gonna go to bed. Night!”  And up the rest of the stairs she went.

...Only to return thirty seconds later to say, “We’re all gonna meet at Leblanc tomorrow for important Phantom Thieves business so don’t open it, okay?”

“Haha, alright.  Now get some rest.”

 

These kids were seriously going to be the death of him.

It was late, and while cleaning up the kitchen before bed, Sojiro was struck by the inane need to check up on both Futaba and Akira.  They would be fine, of course, each fast asleep in their beds and resting up for the next day. But he couldn’t help but worry, especially for the kid; whatever he’d been through, it was more than any teenager should have to face.  So he would check up on them, really quick, just before going to bed so that he could shut up that nagging voice that kept telling him something was wrong.

Futaba had passed out on top of her blankets, laptop open, phone in hand, and glasses on.  The last time Sojiro had closed her laptop without asking he had apparently interrupted some kind of program that was running, so he left it be on the end of the bed and pulled the cover up over her, slipping her glasses up and off her face.  Since she had once snapped her frames in half after setting them on the floor and stepping on them, he was careful to put them on the bedside table.

But then, even before he entered Akira’s room, it was obvious that something was up.

The cat had pushed the door open to get in, and Akira’s voice floated out into the hallway.  At first he thought he had just woken up and was talking to the cat, but the, “no… no…!” was hint enough that that wasn’t the case.

Sojiro knew what night-terrors were; Futaba had had her fair share when she first moved in.  She had curled in on herself, held tight to her knees and whined and cried until he managed to wake her and convince her that everything was alright.  Akira certainly did those last two, his voice breaking as it tried to produce too high a pitch, but rather than becoming smaller he lashed out. His legs kicked and arms flailed beneath the blanket, trying to throw it from his body.  Morgana stood a foot or so away from the bed, looking absolutely confused and meowing when Sojiro came in.

“Get away, cat,” he ordered, not necessarily as loud as he’d like but Futaba was sleeping just down the hall and he really wanted her to stay like that.

But Morgana did not go away.  Instead he slinked under the bed and disappeared into the darkness, where Sojiro supposed that as long as he was out of the way then it would do.

He approached the edge of the bed.  Akira’s eyes were screwed shut as he flailed.  “Hey, wake up, kid.”

No reaction.  Strands of hair stuck to his sweaty forehead.  He kicked and pushed at empty air, at nothing, at the threat that only he could see.

Sojiro hadn’t really expected that to work, but it was worth a shot.  

“It’s just a dream, Akira, it’s alright.”  He reached out to shake the boy’s shoulder but was smacked away by a flailing arm.

“Letmegoplease,” he said in his sleep, so fast that the words all blended together.  “I’msorry pleaseletmego pleasedon’thurtme.” Even hitting his foot against the wall didn’t wake him up, but it did get him facing away from Sojiro’s general direction long enough for him to sit on the bed, put one hand on Akira’s shoulder and one on his knee with enough force to keep them down, and shake him.

“Wake up, it’s alright, you’re safe,” he repeated, a little louder this time.  If that thunk on the wall hadn’t woken Futaba up then nothing short of yelling would do the trick at this point.  Perhaps she had pulled an all-nighter when Akira had been missing and now needed the sleep as badly as he did. “Nobody’s hurting you, you’re alright now.”

He woke from it blearily, not all as one did from the startle of a nightmare.  His eyes opened, wet and bleary, and be tried to blink the tears away. Even in the dark his face was red and splotchy, nose running, chest heaving as his throat constricted while he cried.  Gaze darting every which way before landing on Sojiro, it took some time before his weary mind recalled everything that had happened. That he was safe, that he was protected.

Sitting up, Akira curled in on himself and buried his face in his knees.  He shook with every breath, repeating in a low voice, “I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay…”  Sojiro thought that he hadn’t ever seen a teenage boy look more vulnerable.

Cautiously, he slid over on the bed, then put on arm around Akira’s shoulders.  “It’s alright, kid,” he promised. “Nobody’s gonna hurt you, not here.”

“What if they find me?” he whimpered.

“They won’t.”

“But what if they do?”

“I won’t let them hurt you.  So long as I’m around, you don’t have a thing to worry about, got it?”

Akira leaned on his shoulder, still shaking, face still hidden.

“Futaba got home a little while ago; she was happy to know you’re okay.  If I let anyone hurt you now, I think she’d kill me.”

Sojiro could hear an attempt at a laugh, and alright, that was progress.

“So I’m not gonna let anyone lay a finger on you while you’re here, got it?”

Even though he was still shaking, Akira nodded.  Sojiro didn’t know how he could keep that sort of promise, not when it was apparently the police or something who had done this to him.  But he would do it; nobody else would lay a finger on this kid so long as he was under this roof or Leblanc’s.

“I was so scared,” he confessed.  “I said I would be fine, I told everyone I’d be fine, and I was until I was actually there and they all had guns and needles and could have killed me so easily.”

“Anyone would be scared.”  Nevermind that he didn’t know precisely what had happened to this kid in the past 24 hours, but that was irrelevant given the description and obvious consequences of the events.  “Heck, I probably would have been bawling like a baby.”

“They could have killed me,” he repeated.  “I should be _dead_.”

“But you aren’t.”

“But I _should be._ ”

 _“But you aren’t._  Despite whatever the hell happened tonight, you’re alive.”

Akira swallowed.  His sobbing had died down to a quiet whimper.  “If they find me, though… I just keep thinking about if they find out I’m not dead.  They’ll tear this place up, Sojiro, they’ll destroy it. What if they arrest you? What would happen to Futaba?  You’re in danger because of me and if I get found out…”

Sojiro stared at him wordlessly, his hand resting still on his upper back.  “Is _that_ what you’re worrying about?”

Akira shrugged.  “On top of the whole ‘almost dying” thing… yeah.”

He laughed; there was nothing else to do.  “Jeez, kid… I’m the one who’s supposed to be looking after _you_ , not the other way around.   Listen…” Minding the bruised ribs, Sojiro nudged him gently.  “Don’t worry about me; I can handle myself. I may not look it, but I can be one tough bastard when I need to be.”

That got a laugh out of him, a real laugh.  Sojiro grinned. “I’ll worry about myself, and you just worry about doing your thing and saving the world, alright?  When you’re all better, of course; right now you just need to sleep.” He paused. “Do you want me to stay in here until you drop off again?”

Finally, Akira pulled his head out from where it was hidden in the circle of his arms, wiping his nose on his sleeve.  He still looked like shit, but at least he wasn’t crying. “No, I’m alright. If I have another nightmare I’ll make sure to scream loud enough to wake you up.”

Both of them laughed at that.  Sojiro was glad to see the kid hadn’t lost his sense of humor; it was something he’d liked about him ever since he first stepped foot in Leblanc.  Even if he scolded him for not taking things seriously, being able to brush things off like that was a necessary talent that very few possessed.

Likely sensing that the danger had passed, Morgana jumped back up onto the bed with a chirp.  He stepped over Sojiro’s legs to get to Akira, nuzzling against his leg and purring.

“You know,” said Sojiro, “I’ve heard that cat purrs can actually help broken bones heal faster.  Maybe you oughta keep this one by your side until you feel better.”

The cat meowed again, looking at Sojiro with the general unreadable stare of a cat.  Akira laughed and scratched his head.

“Yeah, that’s a good idea.  You hear that, Mona? You’re gonna be my nurse.”

 

Sojiro didn’t actually sleep very much that night.  Every hour or so he got the urge to check on them each again, just in case.  Futaba appeared never to have woken from her slumber, and Akira passed out with Morgana laying on his stomach.  

Whatever had happened in the past day, whatever shit he’d gone through, Sojiro was pretty sure Akira wouldn’t be alright for a while.  Maybe he wouldn’t be alright ever again. But for now he was safe, and warm, and asleep.

And that wasn’t nothing.


	2. Impressionable Youth

12/04/20XX

 

If the kid stayed up in his room for another day, Sojiro was going to call Doctor Tameki to come and make sure he wasn’t dying.  Ever since he’d stumbled in after Phantom Thieves’ Duty looking more exhausted than usual, he’d refused to leave the attic no matter the temptation.  Even his friends couldn’t convince him to come down, though they came by every day in varying numbers. Yusuke even stayed the night once, but that wasn’t an entirely uncommon occurrence by this point.

“Something happened when we were in Shido’s palace,” Futaba finally admitted after being pestered enough.  “Something real, real bad.”

“And that’s why he’s so..?”

“Mmhm...”  She pushed her glasses up her nose and sighed that deep, Futaba sigh.  “We met Akechi there… and he tried to stop us. He had this whole messed up plan of his own to get revenge on Shido-turns out Shido was actually Akechi’s dad who abandoned his mom and forced her into ruin, so Akechi had a pretty rough childhood-for what he’d done to him, but when we tried to help him he just kept refusing!  Even though we all had the same enemy! It was like, mega levels of frustrating!”

She became suddenly quieter and looked away from Sojiro’s face to instead fidget with her hands.  “And then he… met Shido’s cognitive version of him and it had a bunch of strong shadows with it. Akechi was already pretty weak from losing the battle, and-!”  She swallowed. “And... he got ki-killed. The cognitive version tried to make him shoot us, but he shot it, instead, and then made a wall pop up so the other shadows couldn’t hurt us, but he couldn’t get out from behind it...  I think Akira blames himself. He was trying so hard to get Akechi to see reason, but...”

Well, that certainly explained it.  Admittedly it was a lot to hear, and Sojiro was still pretty stuck on the “Shido was Akechi’s father” part of the story so it took him a moment to properly react.   Akechi had been the one who tried to kill Akira in the first place, and the Phantom Thieves definitely had a vendetta against him, but he was certain they had never wanted him to die.  Besides that, he himself had been a victim of Shido’s, too. If that bastard had made Akira’s life such hell after only encountering him once, Sojiro could only imagine what Akechi’s mother had gone through.  That was bound to make anyone bitter, and he had only been a teenager, after all.

It hit Sojiro again that _all of them_ were only teenagers.

“I brought you dinner,” he said from the top of Akira’s stairs.  “And you’re gonna eat it this time, even if I have to stand here and watch you take every bite.  I don't make enough money to give you food you're gonna keep letting go to waste, ya know.”

“I’m not hungry,” came a muffled voice from beneath the blanket.  “Ann and Haru brought me snacks.”

Sojiro noted the various candy and chip wrappers laying discarded on the floor, along with the dirty clothes, half-empty drink glasses, magazines, books...  To be frank it was a bit of a pig stye.  The few other times he’d been up in the kid’s room it had been relatively neat, but Akira had had _quite_ the past few weeks.  Besides, Sojiro wasn't his dad; not like he was going to demand he cleaned his room.

“C’mon,” he insisted, “you usually eat this stuff in no time flat.”  The plate of curry was held closer to the Akira-shaped lump on the bed, towards what Sojiro assumed was his head, but there was no sign of movement.

“I’m not hungry,” the lump repeated.

“Kid, you’ve gotta eat something more than junk food; even Futaba couldn’t survive without meals when she was locked up in her room.”

The lump shifted, but made no apparent attempt at leaving its place beneath the covers.  Sojiro sighed and set the plate next to the bed, then pulled over one of the old chairs and sat his butt down with a stubborn cross of his arms.  “Well, I warned you. I’m gonna stay here until you eat every bite of that curry; no excuses.”

Akira was silent.  Sojiro found that even his best glare could not penetrate the blanket shield.  The room was uncomfortably quiet.

“...Futaba told me what happened,” he eventually admitted, hoping it would coax out some kind of conversation, but the silence only continued.  Sojiro let it linger for what he thought was a suitable amount of time, and began to say something about how he was sorry Akira and all his friends had to go through something like that, but before he could a quiet noise sounded from beneath the comforter.  A sniffle, a hiccup, a gasp…

“You were right about me,” came the muffled voice from beneath the blankets.  “You were right about me, Sojiro.”

“Huh?”

“When I first came here, you told me I was nothing but trouble.  You were right.” The blankets curled tighter around his form. “I’m just trouble for everyone around me, and I can’t even fix the mistakes I get myself in to.”

Sojiro flushed; shit, had he really said that?  It wouldn’t be the first time his sharp tongue had gotten him into trouble so he wasn’t exactly _surprised,_ but still… what a thing to say to a kid.  What had he been _thinking?_

“Hey, now, I- I didn’t mean that,” he said, attempting several months work of backpedaling.  “I was just... annoyed and frustrated with the whole situation and, hell, I didn’t really know you at all!”

“You were still right.  I’m a piece of shit. I should just leave well enough alone and stop getting involved; it’s better for everyone.”

“Don’t talk about yourself like that,” Sojiro snapped.  Then, rubbing the back of his neck, he added, “And… I’m sorry I said those things about you, especially when I didn’t know you.  I should have known better than to say something like that to a teenager who’d just gone what you did. I mean, half the trouble of punk kids is that nobody gives them a second chance, huh?”

Akira was quiet again.  Then, in a confusing flurry of movements, he pushed the blanket down to his hips and sat up in the bed (Sojiro had been right about which part of the lump was Akira’s head), facing Sojiro dead on.  He noted his lack of glasses, his red, swollen eyes, and the dark bags that had formed beneath them. His face was pale but his cheeks were flushed like he was sick, and his hair looked like he hadn’t washed or brushed it in days.  The scars from his ordeal with the police were tight, white lines across his skin, and Sojiro wasn’t sure if it was possible to lose a drastic amount of weight in the span of four days or if he was seeing things because he’d been keeping track of the kid’s eating schedule, but his cheeks looked sunken, too.  

“I couldn’t even save one person,” he said, jaw trembling.  “Akechi was _right there_ , but he still ended up _dead_ because I wasn’t good enough.”

“That’s not true.”

“You can’t say that; you weren’t there!”  

Sojiro’s eyebrows went up to his receding hairline; it wasn’t every day such a quiet kid raised his voice like that.  It frightened him, but that fear wasn’t for himself.

“You’re right,” he sighed.  “I wasn’t there. But from what Futaba told me, there’s nothing else you could have done.  He made his own decisions, and was too stubborn to accept help when it was offered to him. It’s terrible what happened to him… but it’s not your fault.”

“I could have done something,” Akira insisted.  “If I had just- said the right thing, or done the right thing-!”  He choked on a sob, his voice straining tight in his throat. “He was just like the rest of us, Sojiro; he just wanted to get back at someone who’d hurt him.  Any of us could have turned out just like he did- even Yusuke said so. If I’d just gotten to him before the shadows did, he wouldn’t be..!”

“Akira,” said Sojiro firmly, putting on his best ‘dad’ voice that Futaba sometimes made fun of him for.  “You can’t blame yourself for Akechi’s actions. Yeah, it’s terrible that he went through something so terrible that it made him,” he searched for a good term and came floundering to the surface empty handed, “like… that... but in the end his actions were his choice.  This isn’t a test, and saving someone’s life isn’t down to just… picking the right answers. You can’t control what other people are going to do.”

“But-”

“No buts.  Listen…” he shifted the six inches from the chair to the side of the bed so he could put a hand on Akira’s shoulder.  “What you kids are doing is… incredible. But I know that you know it’s not without risks. You risk your lives in ways I can’t even imagine every time you go into the cognitive world, but you do it anyway.  And you’ve saved people doing it, right?  You saved Futaba from herself, and Ann-chan from that perverted teacher at your school; think of what they’d be going through if you hadn’t stepped in.”

Akira sniffled and wiped his nose on his sleeve, which was pretty gross but Sojiro let it go.  He didn’t say anything.

“I know you don’t really think what you said about leaving well enough alone.  If you did, hell, you wouldn’t have ended up under my roof! And you never would have made all those friends of yours, or turned out to be the Phantom Thieves of Justice.  I don’t think you know _how_ to leave things alone.”   

Maybe he was hallucinating, but Sojiro swore he saw a smile twitch at the corner of the kid’s lips that was gone as soon as it came.  Eventually, he said, “We have to finish changing Shido’s heart, but… I don’t know if I’m ready to do that. I don’t know if I can go back into his palace right now.”  He hugged his knees and looked pensively towards the foot of his bed, chewing on the corner of his lip. “Everyone keeps saying that it’s okay to take a break after what happened, but we have so little _time._ I feel like the walls are closing in around me, and I’m trying to be strong for everyone else because I’m their leader, but...”

The frown knitting across Sojiro’s face was so heavy that it started to give him a headache.  Seeing the kid like this made it seem like he had been wiped clean of all his rebellious spirit, like he was starting to become like others who just shut up and let things be decided for them.

“You just have to change his heart by the day of the election, right?”

Akira nodded.  

“Then you’ve got two weeks.  That’s not a lot of time, I know, but… it’s still time.  You can rest and recover for a few more days, at the very least.  If you want my advice, get out of this attick for a day and go out with your friends, get your mind off things.  It can do you a world of good.” Awkwardly executing a fatherly pat to Akira’s shoulder, he then offered, “And I believe that you’ll do it.  You’ll take Shido down. After all, you’ve never struck me as the type to run away with his tail between his legs.”

His voice was strained and tired when the kid laughed, but it was a laugh nonetheless and Sojiro counted that as a victory.

“And besides that,” continued Sojiro with a smirk, “you wouldn’t want to let your friends down, would you?”

Akira shook his head as another weak, strained bark of laughter rose from his throat.

Sojiro smiled and roughed up Akira’s already rats-nest-esque mop of hair.  “Good.” Then, lifting the plate of curry from its place on the floor, he said, “Now eat your dinner before it gets cold.”


End file.
